About me

This blogname was derived from the novel The Secret Life Of Saeed The Pessoptimist by the Palestinian Israeli Emile Habiby: absurdism as weapon against the (ir)realities of daily life in Palestine/Israel. (The subtitle is from a book by Dutch author Renate Rubinstein. It could as well be my motto).
My real name is Martin (Maarten Jan) Hijmans. I've been covering the ME since 1977 and have been a correspondent in Cairo. I started my 'Abu Pessoptimist' blog in January 2009 out of anger during the onslaught in Gaza. The other one, The Pessoptmist, is meant to be a sister version in English. (En voor de Nederlandstaligen: ik wilde in november 2009 een tweede blog in het Engels beginnen en ontdekte te laat dat als je één account hebt, een profiel dan meteen ook voor allebei de blogs geldt. Vandaar dat het nu ineens in het Engels is... So sorry.)

Sunday, August 12, 2012

Spies that are not loved by other spies

Jeff Stein of the Washington Post writes:
The CIA took an internal poll not long ago about friendly foreign intelligence agencies.
The question, mostly directed to employees of the clandestine service
branch, was: Which are the best allies among friendly spy services, in
terms of liaison with the CIA, and which are the worst? In other words,
who acts like, well, friends?
“Israel came in dead last,” a recently retired CIA official told me the other day.
Not only that, he added, throwing up his hands and rising from his
chair, “the Israelis are number three, with China number one and Russia
number two,” in terms of how aggressive they are in their operations on
U.S. soil.
(...)
As tensions with Iran escalate, according to former CIA officer Philip Giraldi,
“Israeli agents have become more aggressive in targeting Muslims living
in the United States as well as in operating against critics.”
“There have been a number of cases reported to the FBI about Mossad
officers who have approached leaders in Arab-American communities and
have falsely represented themselves as ‘U.S. intelligence,’ ” Giraldi
wrote recently in American Conservative magazine.

Giraldi’s piece continued, “Mossad officers sought to recruit
Arab-Americans as sources willing to inform on their associates and
neighbors. The approaches, which took place in New York and New Jersey,
were reportedly handled clumsily, making the targets of the operation
suspicious.”
“These Arab-Americans turned down the requests for cooperation,”
Giraldi added,”and some of the contacts were eventually reported to the
FBI, which has determined that at least two of the Mossad officers are,
ironically, Israeli Arabs operating out of Israel’s mission to the
United Nations in New York under cover as consular assistants.”